Handmade pizza crusts are not perfectly circular, flat, and smooth-surfaced. The size and distribution of bubbles is markedly less uniform in a handmade pizza crust as compared to a machine-made pizza crust. A handmade crust tends to have less uniform surfaces, distribution of bubbles and bubble sizes, and overall shape. Such handmade crusts lack uniformity because of the random action of hand-facilitated procedural steps that are usually absent from machine-made processes. However, these imperfections present challenges for industrial handling and packaging due to the lack of uniformity of the finished products.
In the past 100 years or so, pizza crusts and breads have been made with the help of mechanical manufacturing techniques, aided by an expanding knowledge of dough science and how to manipulate dough properties to greatest effect to accomplish specific goals. Within the last 50 years, techniques have evolved that can entirely avoid the direct application of human hands. Today, such manufacturing practices are common. In contrast to handmade crust, mechanical manufacturing techniques generally produce pizza crusts that are devoid of variations. Instead, such crusts often have very uniform sizes, thicknesses, shapes, and textures.
Traditional techniques for making a pizza crust involve forming the dough into a crust by hand and these handmade crusts are associated with “artisan pizza”, which consumers perceive as being of premium quality and highly desirable. Handmade crust often involves kneading, rolling, knuckling, tossing, or otherwise forming the dough into a desired size, thickness, and shape, before topping the dough with the desired toppings. The manual nature of these techniques creates variations in size, shape, thickness, bubble distribution, texture, and the like, which cause each pizza crust to be unique. Consumers of such pizzas enjoy the variations present in pizzas made by handmade techniques and generally perceive a pizza having a handmade crust as being a premium product.
The desire for artisan pizzas among consumers is strong. Consumer behavior and purchasing habits make it clear that handmade imperfections in shape, size, bubble distribution, structure, and texture of pizza crusts are highly desirable and such crusts are generally perceived by consumers as being associated with a premium product. In contrast to handmade crust, mechanical manufacturing techniques generally produce pizza crusts that lack variation. Instead, such crusts often have very uniform sizes, thicknesses, shapes, and textures. Such crusts are less desirable to consumers and generally have a perception among consumers as being an inferior product. In this regard, the Italian Association of True Neapolitan Pizza of Naples, Italy (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana), stipulates that if the crust of a pizza is not handmade, a pizza crust is not pizza at all (David Z. Ovadia, A History of Pizza in BUBBLES IN FOOD 2, 39, 411-423 (Grant M. Campbell et al. eds., 2008)). Artisan pizzas, which are associated with handmade quality, are highly desirable to consumers. There are chefs that crisscross the United States teaching audiences how to make “artisan pizza” and publishing books with recipes to help people make their own artisan pizza (see, e.g., Jeff Herzberg & Zoe Francois, ARTISAN PIZZA AND FLATBREAD IN FIVE MINUTES A DAY (2011)).
As consumer demand for pizza products having an artisan appearance continues to grow, it is desirable to employ advanced manufacturing processes to decrease the cost of labor and keep down the subsequent price of end products, making artisan pizzas available to all consumers. For example, metering of dough ingredients into a mixing bowl for batches of 50-2000 lbs, sheeting of dough, making it into certain shapes for pizza crusts (usually circles or squares, sometimes triangles), proofing and baking can be accomplished by purely mechanical means. U.S. Pat. No. 3,880,069, U.S. Pat. No. 6,365,210, and US 2003/0003211 describe pizza crust manufacturing processes but, in these examples, no emphasis is placed upon making the finished product appear artisan or handmade and the finished product has a manufactured appearance. U.S. Pat. No. 7,592,026 describes a process for putting grill marks on a filled bread product. The grill marks are described as uniform, with no attention paid, or techniques devised, to make the pattern less regimented and more randomized to provide a handmade, artisan appearance.
A system and method for advanced manufacturing of a pizza product having an artisan appearance is therefore highly desirable.